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TaeKwonDood writes "Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers' union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun."

Now see... once they become proficient, I find that the ESL students have *better* written and spoken English than native-speakers.

I don't know why it is, but native English speakers don't have the rules of grammar and spelling drilled into their heads nearly as thoroughly as every other language I've studied. When I was an exchange student in France, for example, I remember my host family having conversations at the dinner table about grammar, and the 12-year old kid correcting her father on his improper use of the Subjunctive. And she was right!

That kind of thing just doesn't seem to happen in the English-speaking world.

Those who do not study a foreign language will always have worse grammar because it's easier to understand the purpose of grammar when comparing two languages together. Without a reference point native speakers will not have the intuition to check their sentences. I learned a lot more about English in my Spanish class than anywhere else.

While your post is essentially an extreme and exaggerated example (and a joke), there is some level of truth to it. Language is DEFINED by people and how they use it. Perfectly written English from 1300 is nearly incomprehensible to a modern speaker because over time, people have adjusted the usage and spellings of various words, made or adopted new words, etc. We're not "wrong" with our modern dialect - it jut changed.

In a lot of ways, the academic scholars and people arguing for the "correct" way to speak are almost like little nagging anchors. They are constantly looking back at what the language's last codified accepted form was and yelling that we must conform or we're "wrong". Time has proven over and over again that society eventually ignores them. We will speak how we wish to, and eventually the scholars nagging at us will finally relent, stamp whatever the current generation is speaking as "correct" again, and start yelling at the next generation to conform once more.

I've basically accepted that unlike the scientific facts referenced in the summary, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to speak a language. If you can speak and communicate with other speakers of the language then you are doing it correctly. I'd also argue that even if a non-native speaker speaks what can be branded as a more correct dialog according to some textbook, unless they are better understood by the general population, then regardless of rules, they're certainly not a better speaker of the language.

My hypothesis about why programmers tend to be more exacting about grammar is because you have to be in programming. In natural languages, other people can usually figure out what you meant if you leave out a word or swap the placement of two words. In programming, if you misspell a variable, the program usually doesn't work.

It's not really nitpicking; the sentence was poorly constructed and because of this failed to communicate. I for one thought the sentence was saying that 47% of the earth is covered in water, as did the original poster.

So there's a bit of idiocy with the person who wrote this. In reality, as you put it, 15% got the correct answer--15% did not necessarily "actually know how much of the planet is covered in water." That would imply that no one guessed. A little hypocrisy in the summary, perhaps? In the article, they put it correctly: "Only 15% of respondents answered this question with the exactly correct answer of 70%."

EDITORS, DO YOUR JOBS. If there is a fallacy in the summary, either correct it, or DO NOT POST THE STORY.

Just a note: Knowing how much of the planet is covered in water is *not* scientific literacy. That is trivia knowledge. If I need to know how much of the planet is covered in water (I'd guess 80%), I look it up, and decide if the definition matches my needs.

Scientific literacy would be understanding (1) how to research science you need (2) how to conduct a proper experiment (3) how to evaluate claims for obvious falsehood (4) how to check out non-obvious claims for falsehood, which is related to #1, (5) how to identify whether you are yourself competent in an area of science, or not, and (6) how to find someone who *is* competent, if necessary.

Trivia or not, it doesn't change the fact that is "basic scientific information". Or at least, basic knowledge of the world that is useful, or at least interesting, to have. A "scientific mind" (damn, I'm abusing quotes) starts with a gathering of random but interesting knowledge (as you call, trivia), from that point you start infering and dealing with patterns and such to develop critic thinking.

To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).

Science spur from the need of understanding the natural world around us, and that came after knowing some silly facts and asking yourself: "Why is that so?".

To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).

I disagree. I think understanding and applying the scientific method is the foundation of science, which is just one method of critical thought. Any particular facts a person knows or does not know may be reflective of their opinions about science, or it may be reflective of their particular interests and cultural influences. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that people who fail such a test are able to apply the scientific method. It is probable that people who pass this test, still have no real understanding of the scientific method, how to apply it, or why it works.

I surmise that thinking such as is demonstrated in this survey is a symptom of our broken educational system. It is highly focused upon rote memorization instead of applicable skills and understanding concepts. It's easier to memorize the definition of science than to understand the method. It's easier to teach kids to memorize than to understand. It's significantly easier to test memorization than understanding. It is vastly easier to standardize a test for memorizing a blurb than for understanding a concept.

Don't get me wrong. I think science classes should run through teaching a wide base of scientifically determined fats and likely theories. I just think that should come second to a thorough understanding of the scientific method and how to apply it to determine the truth as well as a firm grounding in hands on experimentation so students can learn that it does work and have confidence in it.

To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).

I disagree. I think understanding and applying the scientific method is the foundation of science, which is just one method of critical thought. Any particular facts a person knows or does not know may be reflective of their opinions about science, or it may be reflective of their particular interests and cultural influences.

You can't learn how to critically deduce something if you don't know things. A basic example, using something un-scientific, jigsaw puzzle solving. See, I know a basic fact, "the box contains 5000 pieces", I know another basic fact "borders are flat in at least one of the sides". With those in mind you can start creating a process to solve the jigsaw, you can put on that a few more "unit" data: "it is easier to get 1 pair together than 4", and from that place start deriving how you are going to solve it. Ok, it is a silly example, and not that great of an analogy (I'm at work and tired), but it shows that without any of those basic facts I couldn't work on how to solve the problem.

Mind you, I think "critical thought", "Principals of Western Philosophy", "Mathematical proofs", "Basic Algorithms" should all be classes since the 5th grade (10 years old here in Brazil). You need to teach the kids how to think. But you need to show them some fact too, so they can apply what they are learning in terms of thinking, and their curiosity on a bunch of "silly" trivia and from that onwards learn how to think.

It is unlikely, but not impossible, that people who fail such a test are able to apply the scientific method. It is probable that people who pass this test, still have no real understanding of the scientific method, how to apply it, or why it works.

I agree with you that people who pass this test may still have no understading of the scientific method, but I don't think that someone who can't get those facts can know it. Mainly because they are easy to infer from other things. Take the question about how much water there is in the world. I may not know the number, I may not have ever thought about it, but if I saw a map, and thinking a bit about it, I can make a good guess (which means, we should expect a much higher "close enough" percentage). The fact that so many people have no idea about it, shows not just a lack of trivia knowledge but a lack of deducing capabilities.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."

"To forget it!"

"You see," he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

Sir Arthur Conan DoyleA Study in Scarlet

The "I" is, of course Dr. Watson, and the "He" is of course Sherlock Holmes.

Just a note: Knowing how much of the planet is covered in water is *not* scientific literacy. That is trivia knowledge.

Incorrect. "Trivia", by definition, is useless information, such as who won American Idol last season. Knowing that 70% of the earth is covered with water is essential information for realizing that overpopulation is an issue, for knowing how crucial water currents are with relation to global warming and weather phenomena, and for geographical and political-boundary wisdom. It's nearly as essential as knowing the shape of the planet or where the meridians and parallels are--the lack of this info is, in cert

Explain how you can calculate your approximate destination time from your speed and distance.

Guess What. a HUGE portion of Americans will FAIL the above basic test. Many MBA holders and other COLLEGE DEGREE HOLDING people will fail it.

Dont get me started on basic science that you can use daily, math, driving safety, common sense, etc... if you add those in then the numbers that fail rise drastically.

Critical thinking skills? you are asking the morons that travel at 85mpg 6 feet from the guy in front of him to think critically when they cant comprehend that their actions daily on the highway are incredibly stupid? How about being able to do basic math so you understand that the 15% you will save opening that store credit card to buy that item will cost you 30% more even if you go home and pay it off right now due to dropping your credit score like a stone.

Most dont know who their representatives are in local and state government or how to get a hold of them. You need to get off your pedestal and actually spend a week observing people and the incredibly uneducated things they do. It's not out of habit or malice, these people around you really are that uneducated.

I see this amplified from the Exchange students at my daughters school.. The German kids all mention how american school is insanely easy compared to theirs. friends I have in Germany, Italy, and China all also cant understand why Americans cant speak more than 1 language and dont understand what they consider basic math, Algebra and Geometry, Most Americans do not know.

Our schools have been an utter failure for decades. From the public kindergarten all the way up to Post graduate. colleges skew grades so that you get a C for what used to be failing the class. now our "average" students are the faiure uneducated ones.

honestly, I wish Obama had the balls to call out and demand that all truancy laws be reinstated, teachers paid based on merit, and that schools and colleges be forced to stop passing people that should not be.

3 of the highschools around here will give you a diploma even if you cant read. That is not shocking, it's a disgusting embarassment.

Explain how you can calculate your approximate destination time from your speed and distance.

The time at a destination changes approximately by one hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude. It will not be affected by speed, although at relativistic velocities the traveller's perception is that time slows down.

That's more difficult than most people think. Karl Popper recognised that the boundary between metaphysics and science can only ever be a convention (in his introduction to the 2nd edition of "The Logic of Science"). "Falsifiability" only works as an abstract concept; it doesn't actually reflect how science really works in practice or what counts as science in practice. That means that although there's stuff that is decidedly within science (eg, heliocentric solar system) and stuff that is decidedly outside science (eg, ID), there's a huge fuzzy area that may or not be science depending on the definitions you take. There's a discussion here [talkorigins.org] about this problem in the context of evolution. (For those who can't be bothered clicking links -- this is/. after all -- it concludes that evolution is science, because science isn't all about falsifiability).

And asking if humans and dinosaurs coexisted is an opinion question, not a question about science. It's entirely possible for someone to believe, for religious reasons, that humans and dinosaurs lived together but to also understand the science.

*does double take* Opinion question? Whether humans (who have been around for less than a million years no matter how loosely you define human) and dinosaurs (which have been dead for over 60 million years unless you call crocodiles and/or birds dinosaurs) lived together is opinion? What definition of opinion are you using?

Claiming religious belief is absurd. If I say the sky is red, and grass is purple, because I was honestly raised to believe these things, does that mean that a debate over whether clear daytime sky on Earth is blue or red is merely a difference of opinion? I'm fine with you thinking the sky is red, but if you claim that you are mindful of science in the same breath, I'll laugh myself to death.

And no, this is no strawman. The rough periods in which dinosaurs and humans lived are so far apart and clearly established, that the only way to have them live together would be if we had a deity who interceded in direct physical ways constantly. And if you accept that, then the scientific method is just as worthless as if you regularly deny the visual evidence of 6 billion people the world over when it comes to the color of the grass and the sky.

That is a HUGE part of the problem with people being dumb. It has become acceptable in our society to call wrong answers 'opinion', and of course 'opinions' are not right or wrong.

Most people do not seem to understand that you can make a statement of fact that is wrong. They believe that a statement of fact by definition is only the right answers.

Even fewer realize that if I say 'My favorite color is magenta.', that I have just made a statement of fact. It is a statement of fact about my opinion. In this case it is a false statement of fact, as magenta is in fact, not my favorite color.

You can't prove the universe existed five minutes ago either, without relying on some basic assumptions of stasis. As I said, if we have a deity who constantly tinkers with physical laws, this all goes out the window, but then, if you're assuming that, you're already thrown scientific thinking out the window.

As soon as your friend shows how the decay of a radioactive isotope can be significantly affected by external stimuli that could reasonably be expected to be encountered on this planet (for example, the core of a star manages to create radioactive elements, but I think it may be hard to prove this was occurring inside fossilized bones), I'll take her seriously. Until then, she's not thinking scientifically, starting from evidence and forming theories, she's thinking religiously, starting from belief, and discarding evidence.

My biggest problem with the summary is that many scientists might fail this "basic science literacy" test simply because it's too specific.

I don't think that's the problem. It's just that it only asks about facts/likely truths determined by science, not about science itself.

As pointed out elsewhere, how much of the planet is covered in water is more of a trivia question.

Agreed.

And asking if humans and dinosaurs coexisted is an opinion question, not a question about science.

Well, it is asking a question where the scientific method has determined one answer to be the most likely truth. Science never really proves anything, just has theories that are more or less supported. A person who understands and trusts the scientific method is a person who accepts the most supported theory until the preponderance of evidence shifts.

It's entirely possible for someone to believe, for religious reasons, that humans and dinosaurs lived together but to also understand the science.

It's also entirely possible for someone to understand the science but believe for religious reasons that the earth does not go around the sun. It's just not rational or scientific because it is rejecting the answers presented by the scientific method and arbitrarily believing something else.

Science literacy shouldn't be about what they know, it should be about what they can recognize.

I agree it should not be about trivia, but it should include understanding and applying the scientific method. If people apply the scientific method very narrowly and then apply irrational and nonscientific methods to determine the facts about other parts of the world, then I'd argue scientific literacy has failed to a significant extent.

Just because I'm literate with books doesn't mean that I can tell you specific details about Edgar Allen Poe, nor does it mean that I necessarily agree with Orwell.

No, but to be literate means you can read and often that you do read, not that you can read certain things but in other instances you can just look at the pictures or you make up what you think the little squiggly things on the paper mean. You don't have to agree with Orwell to be literate, you just have to be able to read his books. Not understanding that the scientific method has determined the most likely truth to be that humans and dinosaurs never inhabited the earth at the same time is analogous to being unable to read Orwell.

No, of course not. But once you pick a post to send to the front page it should then go through an edit process. Can't the select few that are deemed worthy of the front page get a decent edit? It's only 10 to 20 per day.

The only reason we come here daily (besides the commentary) is the edited posts. If I wanted unedited submissions I'd go to digg or reddit. It's the human touch that makes/. special, so let's focus on it and make it as good as possible.

People, the parent is not the real kdawson (the editor). An editor has a little slashdot symbol next to his name. This guy has the username "kdawson (3715)" but actually has a very high user ID, 1344097.

According to The Register, the calacademy guys who set the quiz originally got this 'wrong' too, basically because the 61-70% and 71-80% ranges they presented split too close to the generally accepted answer:

Actually, it is a counter example. The article talks about how science education is lacking and how this is a problem. The summary was a case of poor language skills failing to accurately and clearly convey information the submitter almost certainly understood. The article talks about the problem with science education, but does at address that education is failing in many, many other areas as well.

Yes that's it. What has happened in a few school districts in the past few years as affected the education of people that have been out of school for 20-30 years. It has nothing to do with the general distain for education or higher learning that has existed for god knows how long. It has nothing to do with the glorification of sports and the deification of its practicers. It has nothing to do with a culture that works very hard to create the image of the 'nerd' as something to be shunned as opposed to the 'pimp' the 'hoe' and the 'playa' that everyone should try to be.

Well Scopes [umkc.edu] was more than 80 years ago, so you can't put a 30 year cut off on the religion argument.

Considering that this country was founded by religious refugees, and considering that historically, we've always been slower to adopt scientific theories than most other first world countries, it's certainly a plausible argument.

Frankly I think our scientific glory days are more about the waves of educated immigrants we got in the last century due to the unrest in europe (WWI, WWII, the Cold War) than in any native virtue that we had and somehow lost.

Until we start pushing actual critical thought as part of our curriculum instead of trivia and shortcuts, we're never going to have a world class educational program.

Slow to accept theories? The USA has been one of the absolute leaders in scientific research, Actually, I think we probably are still one of the best in that regard.

The problem is that we have a very disjointed view of science in this country. We have some of the best universities, labs, and research centers in the world. These places are filled with brilliant people from the USA and around the world. People come from everywhere to get such a quality higher education.

Sounds good, but there is a huge percentage of the population that views science and education as being something to be afraid of. Why would want to listen to those liberal elitists working on their spooky experiments?

We have a big problem with the glorification of ignorance and simplemindedness. People want a president "they could have a beer with" instead of some "overe-ducated liberal elitist". The heros of children are rapper and athletes. Being a good student is punishable by your peers.

Slow to accept theories? The USA has been one of the absolute leaders in scientific research, Actually, I think we probably are still one of the best in that regard.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can have the intellectual elites riding (and directing) the bleeding edge of research, while the country as a whole is slow on the uptake of the science the elites (both domestic and foreign) produce. In the meanwhile, countries that produce less scientific knowledge might be much more avid consumers of that knowledge. Quite tellingly, do american scientists have a good knowledge of science as a whole, or do they limit themselves to trying to be leaders in their own domain? (honest question, and food for thought)

Well, at least pimps, hos and playas are merely indifferent to science. They don't actively work to discredit it, suppress it or redefine it as something else.

Yo man, why you down on us playas and our science skills? We gotta use some mad science skills to get the honeys. For instance ya gotta know the correlation coefficient that describes the relationship between yo bling and yo hos, to maximize the amount of hos per dollar of bling. And is the relationship between those sweet rims on yo pimped out ride, and gettin the honeys best modeled by a linear or logistic model? Mendelian genetics is important to know so you can figure out whether a girl's sister gonna be hot. We playas all about the science.

They do this because the good students are winning at a competing status hierarchy, one that does not recognize any achievement in their own.

This is the same reason the jocks hate the nerds.This is the same reason the fundamentalists hate the scientists.This is the same reason MBAs hate the PhDs.

Most of human history has been centered around the primate culture of "Look at me, I am the big man, do what I say or else!" Only in the last few centuries has there been a competing culture that has risen up to say "You know, this universe is really a fascinating place. Your monkey games are so boring." And boy, does the first group hate them for it.

It has nothing to do with a culture that works very hard to create the image of the 'nerd' as something to be shunned as opposed to the 'businessman' the 'beauty queen' and the 'wealthy person' that everyone should try to be.

I corrected your spelling.

That's pretty much conservatism in a nutshell. It's all about the monopolization of resources, the encouragement of inanity to limit threats to the status quo, and good dose of misdirection to keep the victims angry at someone else. (In this case, inner city blacks, though liberals, intellectuals, Jews, women, gays, and many other groups serve that purpose just as well. This particular example is used because it is the only segment of American society that is less educated than the conservative base.)

I completely agree with you, and the GP. On the point of partially home-schooling kids: I think knowledgeable, well-educated parents should do this anyway. As in, try to give as much education and encouragement to learn and study the nature around you, as you possibly can, as a parent. It worked for Einstein and Feinman, to name a few. They wentto school, but both had parents that gave their kids the stimulus and the conditions in which their intelligence could grow.

Boards of Education are trying to teach how a magic man in the sky created everything. Reap what you sow.

I don't think that is the case. Personally, I was raised and educated in Arkansas, smack in the middle of the bible belt, in a southern baptist home, and I like to think I have a firm grasp on basic scientific facts. For example, the Earth's surface is actually closer to 3/4 water, not 47%.

What I think is happening is that people are blaming religion, specifically Christianity, for all the problems of the world. And when it comes to education the real problem is that people are just fucking lazy.

Boards of Education are trying to teach how a magic man in the sky created everything. Reap what you sow.

And while we are on that subject, meet Don McLeroy [statesman.com], chairman of the Texas Board of Education:

McLeroy said that it wasn't until he met his future wife, Nan, that he decided to rethink his faith. She said she would date him only if he were a Christian.

At the time, McLeroy was a 29-year-old dental student in Houston. His response was to first write up a list of reasons that he could not accept Christ. Some things he read in the Bible didn't make sense with what he was learning in dental school, he said. And he wondered why God would allow innocent people to die.

One by one, he said, his questions were answered by pastors and in Bible studies. The conversion took four months. Over the next year, he began taking seminars on creationism and biblical principles. He is now a young earth creationist, meaning that he believes God created Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The tenet in Christianity that says people were created in the image of God became one of the principles that McLeroy held most dear, he said.

"When I became a Christian, it was whole-hearted," he said. "I was totally convinced the biblical principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate scientifically."

If you live in Texas, this guy is edumakatin' your kids. Look at the bright side, if they graduate they can fill those lucrative intelligent design research positions that are just bound to open up,;-)

Q1: How many of them believe in astrology, Feng Shui, crystal power, and other crap?
Q2: How many of them know that the Earth is not flat, and is about 4.5 billion years old?
I would not be surprised if the answer to Q1 is larger than the answer to Q2. Unfortunately. And that's just a sample of delusions compared to a couple of simple and well-known facts.

There is a crying need for teaching the scientific method in schools. Ideally, it would be accompanied by numerous exercises in critical thought, including the examination of "common knowledge" and topical news stories.

As a science type, I encourage you to not turn off your brain to astrology, Feng Shui, crystal power, and other crap.

Instead, test it formally, with double blinds, hoping that it works (so you don't subconsciously suppress data). Then if you find something, have others duplicate your work. That's the scientific method.

Blindly assuming something is false is not.

IMHO, having a science degree and then getting a massage license, I found that some things are very real and they are surrounded with mysticism so that is the way to learn them- but there is still something real in there-- that could be dug out. And it's surrounded by a ton of crap that isn't real.

Boards of Education are trying to teach how a magic man in the sky created everything. Reap what you sow.

I know it's popular around here to bash the religious right and blame them for the decline in science education but I suspect that the problem is with our system itself and not the influence of religious elements. The influence of religion is troubling but the religious-right has lost more often than they've won (Kitzmiller [wikipedia.org] comes to mind) and I don't think it's fair to place a majority of the blame on them.

Consider the fact that most Americans can't find Afghanistan on the map. Consider the fact that we rank 24th in math. How do you blame either of those on religious influences? Math and geography don't stir up a lot of religious dissent the last time I checked. Bottom line: The whole system sucks and you can't blame it all on the creationists.

As for fixing it, I'm not real hopeful. The Democrats solution will invariably be to throw more money at the problem. Given that we are already spending ~$8,300 [census.gov] per student I'm not real hopeful that more money and bureaucracy will solve anything. The Republican solution [wikipedia.org] of unfunded mandates and punishments for failing to meet those mandates doesn't seem very wise either.

My Libertarian leanings would prefer to see less Governmental influence in education. I do find it interesting that many private schools have an annual tuition that's less than the average amount we are paying per student for public schools and manage to turn out higher test scores and better educated/adjusted students. This suggests to me that there could be a marketplace solution to the problem but I have zero optimism that the entrenched interests will ever allow it to happen on a scale large enough to be meaningful.

In short, we are screwed. The only bright side is we still have the best higher educational system in the world. Perhaps the solution is to add a year onto all college programs to correct all of the mistakes that were made during primary education?;)

I do find it interesting that many private schools have an annual tuition that's less than the average amount we are paying per student for public schools and manage to turn out higher test scores and better educated/adjusted students.

Private schools can pick and choose who they accept. Of course their students will have higher test scores.

What concerns me more than lack of knowledge of basic facts is that many adults don't really understand something as simple and basic as "the scientific method"...coming up with idea...testing it...controls....etc. It's almost as if science is "magic" to a lot of adults...might explain why so many can't distinguish between what they think the bible says and testable, provable fact.

And because science is viewed as a ritualized activity, liars and con-artists like the Discovery Institute can take advantage of that ignorance to attack the foundations of science to insert (however cleverly disguised) Creationism as some sort of rational alternative. It does not help science education that lunatics and con-men are constantly trying to knock science down so that they're bizarre literal readings of Genesis can be raised up.

If the US doesn't eventually want to become a second-rate power then it better start seriously consider that pandering to the low-watt lightbulbs is not a route to long-term viability in the sciences or technology.

But that would mean telling people that their favorite holy book is quite literally inaccurate in its depiction of the creation stories in Genesis.

As soon as you tell people that, there's a certain politically powerful group that will be raving mad.

I don't know why some people can't simply accept that stories in the Bible are just that -- stories.

As an ex-biology teacher, one of my professor's pet peeves was that there was no single "scientific method". There are a some general approaches and a lot of techniques, but no single, official approach.

For example, it may be that doing double-blind studies are often a great idea, but we regularly accept studies without it as being scientifically valid. I'm actually partial to the "guess and check" method for solving lots of problems. Different problems work better with different methods.

the earth was fully covered with water, right before god created dry land and put all the fossils which seem to be older inside. The he created the animals in a way that their DNA looks like inherited from each other and created some species which are there to prove that he can also create species which evolve. All this is kind of obvious, so what are your irrelevant anti-christian scientific questions all about?

My one problem with the idea of merit pay for teachers is that there isn't really a good way to measure teacher merit. In most jobs, a worker has a very high degree of control over the end product: for example, nothing goes into the source code I write unless I say so. In such

The problem is that teachers don't (and shouldn't) have that kind of control over the end product: namely, their own students. At best they can guide and influence, but even in the best of situations, more often than not students will be affected by things completely beyond the teacher's ability to predict or control. It is thus grossly unfair to use student performance as a measure of teacher performance, simply because the ties between them are much too loose.

The other option that has been put forward is to use evaluations, by peers, students, administrators, or other factors. Subjectivity is the problem here: it's far too easy to game such evaluations, or to subject them to office politics. This can have both positive and negative effects on various parties, depending on viewpoint, but in any case it cannot be made fair or reliable as a measure of performance.

What other methods exist? I can see none, and would be interested in hearing possible alternatives. But in their absence, "merit pay" for teachers is nothing more than a comforting myth: the concept is unworkable, and implementations cannot be made to reliably follow the concept. Yes, this is different from many (most?) jobs, but the nature of the job itself -also very different from most- is what creates these conditions.

I personally was very interested in teaching about software and computers until I reached college. Then, when I started researching it, I realized how little teachers made and I could make twice as much as some "long term" teachers as my starting salary in industry.

Additionally, teacher's unions don't help. It's impossible (pretty much) to fire a bad teacher. I can think of a few teachers who needed to go while I was in school. (And I was a good student, t

Personally I don't know what the solution is but to say that it's difficult to track this due to an individual student's learning capacity, ability, and desire is just nonsense to me.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it. You can't correlate things that way. You can't say "Little Johnny is only getting Cs in English" and then declare his teacher sucks, any more than you could make the declaration that his teacher's fantastic if he's getting Bs. You don't look at a single student, you look at a body of students over time. If an English teacher consistently produces an above-average number of well-performing students, and this trend continues over a couple of years, then you can start making at least some sort of preliminary statistical statements.

When I was in grade 8, I had possibly the worst teacher of my entire life in Math. He was a disaster area. He'd do things like write on the chalkboard "Polynomial" followed by some rather oblique definition which, because he hadn't really taught the fundamentals to use, made no sense whatsoever. Over half of that class outright failed, and only a small handful of kids got C+s or better. I don't think anyone got an A. Apparently he had been doing this for years. Now, I don't think you have to be a statistician to come to the conclusion that this guy was continually turning out failing grades at a far higher rate than what one ought to expect, and that even those that passed were sitting at the mid-Cs with far more frequency.

The fact was that school administrators were basically hamstrung by the union. The union has fought performance evaluations for decades, has protected some genuinely awful teachers, simply because, despite all the high talk, teachers unions don't give a shit about students. Quite frankly the first act of political will needed is to bloody well hamstring the unions, force at least some sort of medium-term evaluation system that can accept that teachers won't always be at the top of their game, but that anyone who is consistently dropping the ball needs to be let go. Sometimes I think giving the crappy teachers a fat severance package if they go away quietly would be much better than letting them trash the learning of kids for years.

Plenty of higher educational institutions (going back at least 30+ years (from my limited knowledge), especially with technical colleges) have great ways of determining success via core competency tracking of individual students. If the majority of students are not scoring well in their own individual required competencies, then it's a pretty good indicator (along with other tracked metrics and comparisons to other educators teaching the same competencies to other students) that the specific teacher is not performing well.

Personally I don't know what the solution is but to say that it's difficult to track this due to an individual student's learning capacity, ability, and desire is just nonsense to me.

Part of the problem is how do you ensure a reasonable level of ability across a population? In higher ed, in theory, you at least have entrance exam scores and HS grades to establish a rough baseline. While you have standardized test scores at the K-12 level to help id abilities you could then adjust competency levels to abilities but I don't see much of a move towards that type of analysis.

Unless you account for differing abilities you'll penalize teachers with the special ed kids in their class since so

"How much of the earth's surface is covered by water?" Does one need to know the answer to within one percent, or less? Is that even known so precisely? If the correct answer is 70-75% water (approx 3/4) then are 4/5 and 2/3 water good enough guesses? I think both numbers contain the main idea that there's more water than land.

And as for humans and dinos walking the earth together, I think a majority of those who "didn't know dinos and humans didn't live at the same time" would probably have answered that dinos preceeded humans if asked on a gameshow where prizemoney was at stake. Answering that they thought dinos and humans walked the earth together makes is a statement about the beliefs they choose to espouse.

Most people don't do jobs that need this education. What they need are classes in logic, history and philosophy growing up because those will teach them to critically think more than any K-12 class on basic science.

FTAThe approximately correct answer range for this question was defined as anything between 65% and 75%. Only 15% of respondents answered this question with the exactly correct answer of 70%.

I'm sorry, no. Seventy percent is not "exactly correct". At best it is an estimate, and one that is subject to natural fluctuations due to things like temperatures, tidal patterns, etc.

How much should a layperson actually know about the planet's water coverage? "More than half water" is probably a little lacking; "between two-thirds and three-quarters" is probably about right.

"Between 70% and 71%" is worthless nitpicking, a rote recitation of a rule of thumb learned in grade school, the same place they learned that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, there are 2,000 pounds in a ton, and 1 yard = 1 meter.

My wife is a science teacher. She left a job recovering organs and tissues etc. for transplant to become a science teacher because it afforded her more time with the kids.

In her years of teaching she has noticed a few prevalent problems that cause problems with science education, her and I have discussed these at great length.

1. There is a shortage of science teachers. It is always hardest for the the schools to recruit science and math teachers.

2. Due to the fact that the science and math teachers are generally smarter, more logical, and better organized than their 'Bachelor of Arts' counter-parts they are usually the first to be promoted into quasi-management positions (Asst. Principal, Principal etc.)

3. Most of these promotees quickly become disenfranchised with the bureaucracy and idiocy that runs rampant through American schools. They end up getting very frustrated, and instead of resigning from the quasi-management job and going back to being a teacher, their frustration with the 'whole system' causes them to quit outright and seek their fortunes elsewhere.

The future of science education in America is bleak my friends (and foes.)

Here in Pasco county Florida, we have no room for science. You guys already know we can't count (ballots) so this should come as no big surprise. My wife teaches kindergarten and my mom teaches elementary science and math in the slightly more learning-friendly nearby Hillsborough county.

Here's the run down for Pasco:

No living things more active than moss are allowed in the classroom. No turtles, no hamsters, no fish, no frogs, no rabbits...

Every minute of every day of these kids schooling is planned out and filled with rigid, must-do activities. Yes, even the kindergartners. They are filled with things like a 45 minute "reading" block. 5-year-olds have a attention span of 5 minutes, if you're lucky. Many adults that I know chafe if they have to sit and read or listen for that long. Another great must-do is teacher-supervised exercise periods every day. They are made to walk in circles around the bus loop for a half hour or more. This is not recess. The kids don't get to run around in a field under a tree or play on swings and jungle-jims. They walk. Sometimes they do walking games like follow-the-leader. I personally cannot think of a more asinine waste of childhood. Kids need uncontrolled, low-supervision time to just play but instead we are conditioning them into exercising from the beginning of their internment at school.

In Hillsborough county teachers do get merit pay. It's based on test scores and voting. It is highly politicized. Most decent teachers hate it. In Pasco, the teachers were at least smart enough to say no to merit pay, foreseeing the acrimony that it would create because school administration does not have the ability to implement it in an objective and unfair way.

Teachers teach the standarized tests. Schools, not students, are being judged by these tests. Florida was held up as one of the models for the nation in no child left behind. It's a complete disaster. There is no single piece of data that shows that the testing and teaching to the testing is helping the kids learn any better. It is, however, creating a great deal of expensive bureaucracy and causing pain for the kids and the teachers, because one of the features of the testing is that if you don't pass, you don't move up a grade and if your school doesn't make sufficient "adequate yearly progress" you get a whole lot more mandatory attention and supervision from the district administration. In other words, schools that don't meet arbitrary standards will get micro-managed for at least a year and become even-more miserable places to work.

The standarized tests (FCAT) are focused on reading, writing and math. The science portion has almost nothing to do with real science that kids could learn and teachers could teach.

We're facing budget cuts.
More administration, more top-down control and more regulation of "education" are not needed. Teachers have college degrees and pass tests to become professionals. They should be treated like professionals. They should be fired when they don't perform and they should be rewarded when they excel. There is no provision for this at all. Good luck improving your science scores.

You know, I'll own up to not knowing that it was exactly 47% of the earth that was covered with water. I actually thought it was a lot closer to 70%, and, apparently, so does Google, so its a common misconception. I wonder if one of us isn't counting ice?

The summary isn't saying that 47% of the earth is covered in water. It is a poorly worded attempt at saying that 15% of the respondents got the answer right, while 47% got the answer approximately write. TaeKwonDood is just shitty at writing English.

Be care what you classify as trivia. Unless you know facts, you can't collect those facts together and make meaningful statements about reality. Unless you know a diverse set of facts, you are unlikely to join two seemingly unrelated items and form a new concept. Facts are important, the ancients Greeks understood this well, and devoted a significant amount of their education to learning facts, and so produced some of the most progressive thinkers the world has ever known.

The Greeks were fanatics for categorizing things. I suppose other people had done a lot of that before them, but the Greeks were the first people who developed systematic approaches, and in the process pretty much invented Western Philosophy. They didn't always get it right, but you are correct, without some basic fundamentals, nothing else makes sense. So, while in and of itself, knowing how much of the surface of the planet is covered in water might seem sort of a question worthy of Jeopardy, when it i

I don't want to put words in the GPs mouth but it seemed to me that he was saying all the facts in the world would not be useful if the general population cannot think critically. Putting two seemingly unrelated facts together is not a problem with American society, it is determining if there exists a real relationship or if it is just what we want to see that is the major problem.

You will never join facts unless you have a fact-joining intellectual toolkit. The Greeks did some categorization, but they also invented deductive logic, and mathematical proofs.

Our educational system today is all about rote memorization, and it is no surprise that we have kids getting to college who don't understand how to write a paper that presents an argument, more less understanding the finer points of the scientific method.

Secondary education isn't the place to force-feed people facts that they're never going to need or use; you need to teach research, critical thought, logic, and the scientific method...Those things are useful for everyone, and once that framework exists, you can hang whatever facts you please on it.

I say we take the trivia out of science education, and put the scientific method in. People need critical thinking skills, and problem solving methodologies a hell of a lot more than they need pi to 20 digits, or to be able name our current geologic epoch (Holocene), or any of a number of worthless pieces of trivia.

Mod parent up. A lot.

That's the problem with school. You learn by rote as if the exact birthdates, or dates of battles or whatever in history, the exact atomic masses of elements in chemistry, or the precise value of e in math, of the speed of light in physics, etc. would mean anything. Most importantly, even if they do, few teachers tell you what it is.

Sorry, I couldn't care less if the battle of Waterloo was whenever. I don't see what it matters. However, I do find it quite interesting how we know when it was. Even more so the more unreliable our sources get. The process of finding out c is a lot more interesting to me than the precise value. The meaning of it, e.g. the difference it makes to physics, is also a lot more interesting.

We are lacking meaning in our education, and yet the human brain is hardwired to look for meaning. If you learn something that means nothing, you are biologically hardwired to discard it. That's why there are so many mnemonics to help you learn useless facts.

So, what is the meaning of it? Does it make a meaningful difference if the earth is 69% or 71% covered with water? I dare say no, so why should I care as long as the number is roughly correct? Heck, "about two-thirds" is detailed enough for 99% of us. There's no meaning in knowing it any more precisely.

A recent study [sciencedaily.com] indicated just that. In order for students to be successful in higher level sciences, they need depth and methodology rather than wrote memory of facts.

Unfortunately, (and I say this a as high school science teacher) our school system is set up in such a way as to mandate the teaching of broad facts. Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we are now rigorously tested on the breadth of what we teach.

This leaves us with an interesting quandary: Do we teach so that students can be successful, or do we teach so that the school can be successful? For the students, we need to teach depth. For the school, we need to teach breadth.

Ideally, we'd do what the students need. Realistically, we do what the school requires, since to fail to do this means a loss of jobs.

Knowing how precisely you need to understand something in a given context isa valuable thing in and of itself. Knowing how to "estimate" things will allowyou to seem to know more while actually putting less effort into it.

I couldn't care less if the battle of Waterloo was whenever
You must have gone to one of those fancy schools. I think the only time Napoleon was ever mentioned in my American public school was a passing reference to him selling the Louisiana territory to the USA.
At my school, sex education was required, but you had to learn history in the gutter.
Having learned much of what I know about history on my own, I can tell you why memorizing some dates are important. They help you fit in everything else. Most people have no concept of history. Did George Washington ever have a chance to meet Columbus? Who knows?
Well, if you learn a few dates cold, then other things can fit. For example, start with memorizing 5 dates, 1776 (Declaraion of Independence), 1492 (Columbus discovers America), 1066 (Norman invasion of England), 0 (approximate birth of Christ), 1000 BC (approximate time of King David's reign) and you have a context for otherthings. You hear that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and instead of just hearing 4 numbers, you can think "70 years after Columbus, so he probably knew about America". You may not remember the exact date, you'll probably remember that it was shortly after Columbus's time. When you later here Queen Elizabeth's reign started in 1558 you can realize that that was around the same time as Shakespeare and it was about 70 years after Columbus.
Suddenly instead of random disjoint numbers, you have a web of information that can fit together, reinforce other information, and allow you to draw conclusions. This applies to other fields as well. You understand and remember information a lot better if you have other related facts in your memory.

Is it just me, or does it seem the job of 'editor' on an English language news site should come with the requirement that those filling it should not fail at basic English literacy?

Yes. However, the more important problem is that the number of people who can write English properly is diminishing; this leaves fewer people qualified for the job of editor, so editing standards also diminish over time.

" mere names of places...are not geography... know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena (alike of the natural and of the political world, in so far as it treats of the latter), to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the great laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man. This is 'a description of the world' -that is Geograph

The cream will rise to the top in the private-sector schools, as it does now.

Ah yes, privately-educated Americans. Those fortunate people whose parents paid out most of their income to send them to schools designed to extract as much profit from the education system as possible. This is why I have to teach people who are supposedly of university calibre basic arithmetic, that goes beyond their school's "If Sheneequa goes to McDonalds and buys three Big Macs for $6, and Ernest goes to Burger King and only gets two burgers for $5, then how much better value is McDonalds?" questions.

If the facts are not relevant to a person's daily life or that person's career, who cares if they know the quantitative answer to a question? Let that person concentrate on information that can actually improve their lot in life, and stop quizzing them on trivia.

Except they ARE relevant to a person's daily life. Global warming affects each and every one of us daily and will continue to do so to a greater and greater degree. Knowing fundamental facts about our planet helps people understand the concept and therefore helps them vote properly for candidates best qualified to work towards solving the problem. It is unquestionable that a voter who does not know 70% of the planet is water is less qualified to help fix the planet than one who does know that. "Trivia" this